Bear with me, this is going to be another large post because I'm loving this game. My Chosokabe empire is expanding all over the place, although now my renown is "prominent" or something like that.
I cleared out one enemy on my island, the other clan there was friendly and I talked them into an alliance, they have been useless though the whole game, but at least I haven't had to worry about them backstabbing me so far.
They went to war against that island up in the northern part of the map (Sogo?). I was already working on a navy and trying to decide where to invade, and from my time playing as Date I knew that island had a goldmine and was very profitable. Problem was it was a million miles away.
I made a small fleet and loaded up my entire army, sending them off to conquest and glory! After nearly 2 years of travel by sea, they arrived, disembarked, and promptly got slaughtered. I don't know what happened, the forces were about even (slightly in their favor) but they just overwhelmed me. I think they had a lucky cavalry charge that started a chain route.
So another 4 years or so later, I return, THIS time with a larger force including ashigaru yaru. Their cavalry was slaughtered on my ranks of spears, and it was a pretty easy battle.
I'm liking the diplomacy system so far. The AI seems better in this regard and doesn't make stupidly outrageous demands or absolutely refuse your own demands either. I've seen some interesting logical chain reactions too from big clan wars, and watched how alliances change. I've been using this to my advantage and waging war against anyone I see that everyone else hates.
Most of the clans are indifferent-to-friendly to me, probably because of the insanely profitable trade network I have set up. My Vassals and allies are a different story. My long-time ally is at war with not only the largest clan but also the clan I get the best trade from, luckily they don't seem to have actually attacked each other in the past 20 turns or so.
Vassals seem pretty active. A small clan declared war on one of them, I joined in and when I went to attack the enemy city I was joined by two other vassal clans. I assume vassals can conquer towns on their own as well?
The only thing I am really worried about this campaign is that my territories are mostly scattered all over the place, and that my vassals might do something stupid. I don't know if they can declare war on their own, or if they break away if the Shogun declares war one me or anything. Anyways, defending my empire will be a nightmare against multiple enemies.
The only part of the battle AI that needs major work is when it is defending a seige. Mostly it seems to just mill around inside the walls, where my Chosokabe archers can easily kill them. I have yet to see a single AI unit actually move up to the walls for protection from arrows (or to protect the wall against climbing).
One bad example of this was when I had a random unit passing by a Vassal that was under seige. I joined into the fight, which was in the enemies favor. I didn't think I could do much with just my 1 single unit of yashigaru samurai.
The battle starts and my ally is milling around in the center courtyard of his fort (it was the basic one with no outer levels of walls). I started behind three groups of yashigaru yaru, and by the time I reached them they were already scaling the walls. This worked out as I was able to attack them from the rear and even though there were 3 units against my 1 I was able to route all three with very few losses.
Then I watched as my ally proceeded to get decimated by the main army, which consisted of samurai, archers, and light cavalry + general. Mainly because they just kept milling around in plain sight. I decided to charge out the front gate and engage the archers in melee, hoping my ally would follow...but nope. I was chased back inside when the cavalry came charging in to help their archers.
And thus began a 30 minute battle of me running around a single unit of samurai trying to kill 3 units of archers, a unit of light cavalry, and a unit of samurai all by myself while my ally continued to putz around inside his fort.
Eventually I got a lucky shot and took out the enemy general, and shortly after that routed the archers, leaving the light cavlary unit. I took my 56 remaining out of 120 Yashigaru Samurai and met the next cavalry charge head on...and routed them.
. Maybe I can grab it on sale next month somewhere.
